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octoshott · 2 months

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So. Side Order, huh?

I've been chewing on my thoughts over this for a good few days now. Want to spit them out somewhere. Vague-ish spoilers ahead.

I want to preface this with saying that I love Splatoon, I've been playing it since 1, really dropped off near the end of 2. Nintendo made Octo Expansion for me, they released it on my birthday and I love it so fucking much.

Side Order is fun, but lacking criminally in content.

You can argue Roguelites are like this in general, its the core princible to replay them over and over again and as someone who enjoys Roguelites, I agree!

However, a key thing that good roguelites do is continously give you a reason to keep playing- whether that be addictive gameplay or, usually, good story and lacing that in with difficulty that becomes the players goal to lessen- It rewards the player for being curious, experimental and above all else persistant.

I am fully aware that difficulty, due to Splatoon's target audience, in something like a roguelite was never going to be an easy thing to balance let alone pull off but having the main plot resolve itself once you hit the top of the tower was, in my opinion, the first of its blunders.

I feel as if the Splatoon developers know how much the lore and worldbuilding of these games matter to players. Side Order was advertised in very similar veins to Octo Expansion. The trailers had mystery and intrigue with clear connections to the well recieved and loved Octo Expansion to the point of having the same protagonist among other simularities.

They were clearly teasing this to be a successor of SOME capacity to Octo Expansion. And even as I went into this expecting it to be nothing like OE in terms of it's personal weight, I wasn't expecting something so short.

Classically, in roguelites that focus on story, you would gain story beats the more you replay. And techincally you gain this with the keys gathered from each fully cleared palette. But usually your story rewards in roguelites come from clearing or attempting runs and rewards:

With Side Order's story being resolved the MOMENT you step onto floor 30 with no real context unless you've intentionally avoided the top or have genuinely been slowed by its difficult (which I assume is what the devs intended) makes it's climax feel fast paced and lackluster- undeserved, even.

And, yes, I am fully aware that when you climb the tower agani after the credits role, you begin gain more lore about whats going on. But with the actual, main threat neutralized in every possible way it feels as if this lore should've been offered to us much sooner and much more spread out for a better pay off.

It's story feels like its being told out of order and, in my personal opinion, the themes and actual telling methods of Side Order we're a largely missed opportunity to tell something a bit more indepth. Climbing a tower that gives you essentially nothing until you reach floor 30 (which in my experience takes about 35-40 minutes) only to recieve about two scentences of lore is incredibly tiring and feels dissastifying when the main plot is already over.

It's lack of variation in level design, tasks and chips doesn't help with the climb each time if you're looking for the lore or just to 100% either. And you can argue this is a roguelite problem, but Splatoon's scenario's for a tower climb are pitifully small and you will start to seem repeat almost immediatly on your second or third run.

I also feel like it relies far too heavily on the player knowing and caring about Octo Expansion. I'm not saying that I think it was a bad idea to have most of what's going on in Side Order happening because of Octo Expansion's events. Hell, I was happy when they were very blatently showing this early on.

But it does very little with its ties to Octo Expansion, making Side Order feel like its constantly struggling to be its own thing away from the original DLC.

I think I can almost see what they wanted to go for here, and its frustrating, it felt close to something at least telling a decent story.

Every single little beat I've gotten has helped me understand more and more what they were going for, but since the main conflict is already resolved I find it hard to be excited and more frustrated that I wasn't given these during my initial playthrough.

I feel as though the roguelite formula was an interesting idea that they polished the best of their ability and to make work both for casual and experience players- but I think thats where the problem comes in.

With Side Order being the same price as Octo Expansion and offering very little in terms of replayability and most especially for me, story, the whole thing ends up feeling like a muddled mess that would've worked better had the roguelite aspect perhaps been dropped in general for a general tower climb.

Missed opportunies feel like they decorate Side Order in a way that leaves me fairly disappointed.

I think, overall, Side Order is a fun time that can be enjoyed but the way it was implimented into the gameplay formula was largely a mistake, especially coupled with the marketing of this being something more indepth with its story when it's not, and I can absolutely understand why I'm seeing a lot of disappointment for it.

#splatoon #splatoon 3 #splatoon side order #side order #splatoon spoilers #side order spoilers #i just wanted to spit my thoughts out somewhere #i could've gone more into my grievances with the plot but i wanted to generalize this and its already too long #but i definitely feel mismarketed too #i say this as someone whos enjoying it despite its lack of content #i am DEFINITELY let down in terms of what they seemed to be implying in trailers #and if you enjoy side order thats fine all the more power to you #salutes #scrolls.txt

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ellesliterarycorner · 1 year

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hi! i just found your blog and it’s amazing! all those wonderful tips, you are a gift to this world.

do you have any tips on how to plot the main plot? or how do you organise everything before/during writing? like, the structure of the plot, if you draft everything first and then start writing, or do you just write a la loca?

tysmmm <3

Omg, you are so so kind. I really appreciate that! So, I am the biggest plotter on the planet. I definitely structure everything before I even think about starting to write, so I'll walk you through how I start plotting my story and give some tips on it along the way!

Step One: A Character Appears

I was actually just talking about this last week in one of my college interviews, but I start every story that I write with a character. I think it’s because I am such a character over plot reader. I love character driven stories the best, and I like to start writing with a character I think will be compelling for my readers. I think this is a good place to start for everyone because in my opinion it’s a lot easier to change a character to fit a world or a plot then change a plot or world to fit a character. Once I have a semi-coherent idea of a character, I interrogate them. I like to know everything about a character before building a world for them to live in. I really like these 100 OC questions by viralremix on Deviantart. I’m not saying that I always actually go through and answer all 100 of these questions, but I go through them and pick out which ones I think will be the most helpful to me as I start writing. I also don’t do every single major character that I have, but I normally do my main protagonist and the person who is the closet to them throughout the story!

Step Two: What in the World

When I work on my plotting/outlining, I group together worldbuilding and my main plot. I’m not sure exactly why I do that, but it makes sense in my head. Now that I have a character to work with, I can start building the world and the plot for them which kinda go hand in hand if you think about it. For Project Starlight, my current wip, I was really inspired by some digital art I saw on Pinterest of a girl laying on a bed reading a book in this super futuristic bedroom and out her window was an asteroid field. I instantly knew that was the world for my MC. After I decided that, I need a basic premise for the story. For this step, I actually use the snowflake method. You basically start with this core idea or theme and then every other aspect of the story is built around it until you flesh it out into something coherent. Kinda like how a snowflake starts in the center but it has different sort of branches, but they all connect back to that idea in the center. The snowflake method is also a good place to start if you don’t want to fully commit to a complete detailed outline, but still want to have a premise and a theme to go off of when you start writing.

Step Three: A Beginning and An End

Because I physically cannot start writing without having a beginning and an end, once I have my lovely little story snowflake, I plot out the beginning and the end of my story. Above all in my opinion, the beginning and the ending are the most important things in your story. They tell the reader why they should ready your story and wrap up everything to make sure the reader thinks that reading the story was worth their while and possibly entices them to read a sequel or spin-off novel. Once you have your story’s premise, you can then decide what the most effective way of drawing readers into your story is. Whether that be a lot of flashy worldbuilding, a super intriguing hook, or just plopping them right into all of the drama of your world. There’s a lot of pressure on writing the first chapter, but when you’re plotting, just decide how you want to introduce your character and your world! Same thing goes for the ending of your story. How do you want to convince the reader that your story had a purpose? Or convince them to continue reading the rest of the series?

Step Four: Save the Cat???

I have been trying so hard to use the Save the Cat plot structure. But, honestly, for me, I think it works better when I don’t use it until the second draft of my story. I feel like as a plotter, I should love how detailed the plot structure is, but my brain doesn’t like it until the second draft for some reason. Still, it’s a really great plot structure to use, especially for new writers because it pretty much tells you where everything needs to go! Basically, according to the Save the Cat Beat Sheet, there are fifteen story beats that should be included in your story. I’m severely simplifying this, but this link is where I found a lot of information on Save the Cat, and I’m also including the aforementioned 15 beats below. The site goes into great detail about how to use Save the Cat for your story. But, I really do like how everything in this method is broken up into percentages, and I cannot recommend this enough if you’re struggling with plot structure.

Opening Image – 0% to 1%

Theme Stated – 5%

Setup – 1% to 10%

Catalyst – 10%

Debate – 10% to 20%

Break Into Two – 20%

B Story – 22%

Fun and Games – 20% to 50%

Midpoint – 50%

Bad Guys Close In – 50% to 75%

All is Lost – 75%

Dark Night of the Soul – 75% to 80%

Break Into Three – 80%

Finale – 80% to 99%

Final Image – 99% to 100%

Step Five: Just Start Writing

I feel like I’m saying this in all my posts now, but once you’ve done everything above, there really is nothing left to do but start writing! I freely admit that I am a perfectionist in terms of my story outlines, but as I’ve gotten older that sometimes I use my need to have a sturdy outline as an excuse to procrastinate the writing process. When I’m scared to start writing a project I reason with myself that I can’t start writing if my outline isn’t finished, but I’m also procrastinating finishing my outline cause deep down I’m scared to start writing. It’s a never ending process. So, when you’re working on figuring out the main plot and the structure of your story, try not to stress about it! I can’t tell you how many times things change while I was in the middle of writing or in later drafts of the story!

I really hoped this help! Thanks for sending in the ask and being so nice!

#writers #writers on tumblr #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writing #writing tip #writing tips #plot #plotting #plot structure #writing resources #writing resource #writing reference #writing references

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colorisbyshe · 2 years

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Why are you following a twitter called Yaoi Polls??? 💀💀💀 lmao anyway, I get archive panic rather easily, so I don't really get into media unless it's a short canon or I rode the wave as it was starting. Like, those book series with 9 novels and counting? Or manga/anime like One Piece and the 16358 volumes/episodes? I just can't. I get too overwhelmed by that. However, I am intrigued by Star Trek. I want to join the Spirk navy lmao but I don't know where to start? There's too much canon. Help.

I'm following yaoi polls because I am a pacifist and hate war but crave violence. And because it gives me a chance to talk about my ships. But mostly it's for the violence.

Also, okay, there is too much Star Trek canon. And I am perhaps either a very wrong person to ask or perhaps a very right person to ask because I have.... dodged a lot of the Star Trek cnaon?

Like, if you like Trek, you're a real Trekkie, but if it was possible to be a fake fan... I would... dangle perilously close?

So, instead of giving you advice, I'm gonna tell you how I did it withotu being overwhelmed.

First, I got into star trek by watching hte "AOS" films, which are the three star trek films starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk that came out starting in 2009. Three easy films to kind of dip you into the worldbuilding. These all feature characters (versions of characters) from The Original Series. They're "modernized" versions, so not necessarily the truest versions of themselves, but it's sort of like an intro course where you learn the basics and then if you go deeper, things get corrected or given nuance later on.

I decided, "I like these dudes, and I especially like Spock, I'm going to create a SCU--Spock Cinematic Universe."

So, I had tried watching the original series before and I'll admit, parts of it... aren't great? Some of it is problematic, some of it is just weird, and some of it is straight up boring.

TO kind of... help myself along, since I wasn't terribly invested in TOS yet, I looked up a few guides of "MUST WATCH TOS episodes" and a few "HEre's episodes you can skip." I compared notes, made my own ranking system sort of culminating htem all together (if one guide says definitely skip but another one says it's kinda fun, I know to give it a shot but not feel terrible if I zone out). TOS is VERY episodic, so going, "Huh, thi sisn't doing it for me," won't fuck you over MOST Of the time. But the guides help you figure out if actually you're gonna miss a huge moment of lore or spirk or whatever.

Most lists included which episodes of the animated series (based on TOS) you should bother with, that list is very sparse.

And then at this point, if you enjoyed it, youc an look into watching shit you missed out on or delving into novels (which I don't think are canon) or comics.

DO watch all of the subsequent movies, the first one is boring as fuck for a long while, but some of the ones after are AMAZING.

For a long while, this is where I put down Star Trek.

But then Discovery was introduced with a NEW Spock sibling and then SPock himself is in it. So I wathced the first two seasons (and intend on watching the rest) and then Strange New Worlds has ONE season... with Spock in it. So... I watched that.

And that's how I took a huge fucking canon and went "I want the parts with HIM in it" and ignored hte rest. Technically, I know Spock makes appearances in other series but like... none as Spock-centric as these.

I do intend on watching more Trek with time (TNG intrigues me, Deep Space Nine intrigues me) but like... I think Star Trek is very much what you want it ot be.

Sometimes, you're gonna be left clueless abotu references to past baddies or aliens or whatever (or sometimes FUTURE baddies or aliens) but like... it's fine? From what I've seen, ST canon can contradict itself or sort of... not mean anything sometimes, so like, take what you want, leave the rest. It'll be fine.

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ash-mcj · 2 years

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hi!!! question - do u think Dylan is gonna surprise us and make an appearance in the teen wolf movie? it just feels insane to me that they’d make it without him??? and also dying to know your thoughts and opinions that they announced a character as “Derek’s son” ?? It’s all very wild to me and idk how to feel I need you to tell me how to feel

[I'm going to state some of my opinions because they were directly asked of me. I'm not interested in arguing with people, so if you don't agree with things that I say in this post, just keep scrolling.]

Heyy!! Hopefully my feelings on these things will help you figure out your own lmao ♥

First things first, I don't think DOB will be in the movie. As much as he has said in interviews that he loves the show, he's also expressed a lot of negatives about how it was run. I don't really think he wants to return - regardless of his excuse of liking where the show ended. He's mentioned that the show "has his heart", but I think he means that he has a nostalgic feeling about it because it was where he started as an actor, more so than his love of Teen Wolf as a series. And since he was likely being pressured to do it by fans, I'm glad that he's not forcing himself into a situation he's not excited about.

That being said, I don't think the movie would be stupid enough to pretend he doesn't exist. I'm sure there will be mentions of him - along with maybe an email, text, or phone call where the audience can't hear the other side, so they just pretend Stiles is on the phone.

Eli Hale!! Let me tell you, I am ecstatic.

Looking at the timeline and his appearance, I think the most believable mother would be Paige. He definitely looks like her and that would be a very interesting twist. Maybe a Peter situation, where Talia took memories of a baby? But I would also be very bothered, if they reused the same storyline twice in the show, so... Also, I like this idea because I've had a WIP in the works for months about teenage Paige having a baby and Sterek raising it, so this would play into my worldbuilding quite a bit haha.

The other option would be Kate, which also intrigues me. A hunter-trained werewolf, breaking free of his deranged mother's lifetime of brainwashing when he finds his father's old 'pack'? Give me that!! I would love a storyline like that and it would actually be something that would make sense for why Derek wouldn't know. He would've left to New York before Kate started showing. This could also open up the possibility for getting more information on the Argents. Maybe Eli was raised primarily by Kate's mom or some other relative, with Kate in and out of his life? I think there would be a lot of room to play around with this idea and I'm here for it. Shit, if Eli isn't Kate's, then I might need to start a new WIP.

I know people are all upset about the idea of Eli and who his mom might be, but I really don't see why. Derek is not a real person - he's a character - and it literally doesn't matter how often his past comes back to haunt him. If he's Kate's kid, then there's a lot Jeff Davis can play around with - and fanfic writers, too!

As far as I'm concerned, this movie will do three things:

revive old fandom members, along with bringing in new ones

provide and inspire new content to play around with for edits, moodboards, art, fanfic, etc.

build the Teen Wolf universe

There are no downsides to this movie. We gained a new Hale character to play with! We're getting inspiration for our content creators! We're getting to step back into Beacon Hills! And if it's horrible? Who cares?? Just pretend it didn't happen, like most of this fandom pretends seasons 4-6 didn't exist.

Why stress about a fictional movie, when you could be excited for this new Teen Wolf content?? I'm so ready for it. I'm ready to need to rewrite the whole thing and probably double my WIPs while trying to fix the dumpster fire that the movie will undoubtedly be. You bet your ass I'm getting Paramount+ as soon as the movie comes out.

#teen wolf movie

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flameraven · 2 years

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Where the Drowned Girls Go

So like. Can we talk about what's happening at Whitethorn Institute? Because holy shit that is not what I was expecting. (Spoilers Ahoy)

So we've been hearing about "the other school" for awhile-- I'm not sure when it's first mentioned, possibly all the way back in Book 1? And we knew it was a school for people who didn't want to return to their Door, and you know, that's fair. We've seen that some people have really traumatic experiences and won't or can't go back to their Door. I figured, I don't know, the Other School would maybe be stricter, more focused on helping its students re-adjust to the "real world," and involve a lot of therapy. That is absolutely not what is happening. When Cora gets to Whitethorn, we see that it's not really a school so much as it is a prison. Everything is strictly controlled and highly regimented, and it deliberately torments the students: giving them food opposite to whatever they had in their other world, repeatedly asking them questions to make them deny the reality of their experiences-- very abusive, gaslighting tactics. There's no camaraderie allowed-- students are encouraged to snitch on each other to avoid being punished themselves. In-fighting is encouraged with different classes competing against each other. The punishments are also very harsh, including solitary confinement, withholding meals & access to the bathroom. We also learn that you can't even contact your parents to get you out, because they block all the letters students send. Sumi says "it forces students to crawl into their hearts to be safe and then turns their hearts against them." The only way you can survive is to deny yourself, over and over and over, until you can parrot the nonsense they want to hear and you can "graduate." It reminded me, honestly, of something like a gay conversion camp. :( But then!! It gets worse! Because the school is actively blocking the appearance of the doors, and we learn that you can't even escape once you graduate-- not as yourself. As soon as you step off the grounds, you forget everything. Your Door, and your experience at Whitethorn. What happens to those who don't graduate? Turns out the Headmaster steals their names, rendering them soulless, obedient drones, who can't remember themselves (and seemingly can't be remembered by others, either). No wonder Eleanor says she considers it a personal failing every time she loses a student to Whitethorn! I just-- this school is tremendously fucked up and yet I am INCREDIBLY intrigued. Seanan McGuire has created a truly horrifying piece of worldbuilding, and I love it. I was kind of disappointed by Across the Green Grass Fields, but this book more than made up for it. I can't imagine that we aren't going to see more of Whitethorn, its nefarious Headmaster, and whatever horrible scheme he's got cooking (stealing the magic of the doors and the students for himself, maybe??). Goodreads says Book 8 is titled Lost in a Moment and Found, so I am hoping we get more from Rowena next time, the girl who fell into a clock world and aged 6 years in 3 hours. And maybe her story will include more about Whitethorn and hopefully the beginnings of some resistance/rescue for those kids. Because damn.

Why must we wait a whole year for more book! ;_;

#wayward children #seanan mcguire #where the drowned girls go #wayward children spoilers #whitethorn institute #cw conversion therapy

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Amphibia Season 2 Reviews: The Second Temple and Barrel’s Warhammer “The First Drumbeats of War”

Welcome back all you happy people! We’re in the final stretch of the season now, only three more episodes after this. And with this episode the end trajectory of the season becomes clear and the anticipation to the finale mounts.. and the dread as boy oh boy is this one going to hurt. Join me under the cut for a recap and spoiilers as I break down my thoughts and prepare for war.

The Second Temple:

Our heroes head to the great north for their next temple...

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No no I just mean the arctic part of Amphibia. That’s sadly not a crossover we’re getting.. yet. One can dream.. or write weird fanfiction. Point is it’s time for an ice adventure. Also Hop Pop now has his own “Hop Pocket” in Joe’s sweater> Aww. Also Joe has a sweater now. Awwww. And he crashed upside down. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I keep thinking I love this bird as much as humanly possible and he keeps going and finding new ways to make me love him more.

Our heroes soon run into a problem though: While Marcy’s coordinates got them there the temple isn’t in sight. Anne does find them some help though as she spots a familiar stand. It’s some lady they met back in the bizzare bazzar named valeriana?

Yeah clearly a lot of you have better memories than me, which isn’t hard my mind is a never ending sinkhole and while I remember a LOT of stuff, I often forget just as much. So a vendor lady who was hinted to be important but didn’t do much in the episode itself totally slipped my mind and I didn’t even notice she was apparently in the season 2b trailer. I have no memory for a character who turns out to be vitally important yet all the memory for Stoopy.

Your doin Odd’s work Stoopy. But she is as she offers to take them to the temple, revealing herself as part of a hiden order dedicated to the calamity box and protecting it.

But like most hidden orders, Val seems to be a huge prick, and chastises and berates Anne constantly questioning her worthness and skil, and chastising her for giving up her coat to save her friends when a cardinal Val summons goes after their catapillar skin coats, and goes out of her way to rescue a family in the path of an avalanche. Val decides from all of this Anne is not worthy and she won’t guide them.. which causes Anne to rightfully call her out on her episode long streak of irritating condesencing bullshit. Val responds as you’d expect.. by warping Anne to another dimension and trying to steal the box from her leading to a fight. The fight is engaging with Anne giving it her best, though weirdly she didn’t take her sword along, while Val points out a lot of anne’s thefts over the years: from bessie to hop pop’s wallet.. to the box. Which Anne admits.. but also admits as shitty as it is it’s better to learn from bad things you did and do the right thing now, than to dwell on them and let htem drown you.

Anne wins and val is dangling by a ledge and while she points out Anne can’t escape without her.. Anne figured out the staff. But Anne.. is a good persona nd as much as she’d like to let val die when her hand slips...she dosen’t. SHe’s her enemy sure but she’s still a person and her death does nothing and solves nothing. And that.. turned out to be the whole point. Val was simply testing Anne’s character: The whole journey was the temple and while the previous temple tested for intellegence.. this one tested for heart, anne’s greatest trait. Val powers the gem with her staff glad to have found something worthy.. but much like Luke or Aaang, Anne hears her friends in trouble and leaves with the gem only mostly charged. She returns.. to find everyone okay, Marcy showing the plantars stuff on her phone, and they set off... but the gem blinks a bit as they leave.

Final Thoughts on the Second Temple: The second temple is a decent episode. It has some great worldbuilding, some good gags and really shows off anne’s character development, her empathy and her bravery while giving us an intresting side character and possible future Ally in Valeriana and increasing the mystery around the calamity box. If it’s REALLY as bad as it’s name implies... then why are these people protecting it? And why are the protections, the order the temples.. benevolent, based on personal character and making sure the right person passes. Did Andrias name it that.. and if so.. did he do it for his master? I have a lotta questions and i’m excited to get the answers. All in all a very decent ep.. but like last week the second one majorly upstages it.

Barrel’s Warhammer

So we finally check back with Sasha and I was excited as her previous spotlight episode earlier in the season is still the best episode of the season. But this one brilliantly builds on that.

The various leader of the toad towers are having a summit and well...

So i’m just going to call them the cryptkeeper, bad haircut and grime’s sister. Their all doubtful of whatever pitch Grime has while Grime and Co are preparing, and have bonded with Percy and Braddock more and the two having designed a cool one eyed logo for their army.

The pitch is intrigues the toad with even Grime’s Sister he used to tease as a kid being impressed.. and reveals to our anti-heroes that his name is Grimothy. Grimothy. GRIMOTHY

But their not impressed with the idea of a disgraced captain and his “Hummus” leading them, even if Andrias has his own Humuss’... and this reveals to Sasha her best friends exes are doing just fine without her and working together. She takes it how you’d expect.. by taking it out on Bad Haircut’s guards and angrily asking waht it’llt ake. it’s then the cryptkeeper rises, turning out not to be dead with one request: Barrel’s Warrhammer. Sasha agrees to retreive it for them, but both Percy and Braddock are terrified.. as is GRIME of all people.

We find out why as they take a lava boat to go fetch the thing: Barrel’s Warhammer is a legendary weapon, wielded by the Toad Hero Barrel, who used it to fight off a great monster and keep it from destroying a villiage dying in the process with his hammer apparently still guarded by said beast. Grime doubts it’s actually real and feels i’ts just a legend. But Percy and Braddock are more concerned with posisbly dying but Sasha reassures them that they’ll be fine and if it gets too dangerous, she’ll bail, using a Kawaii pose as a signal and making me feel very old.

They find the Hammer but can’t lift it because “Only those who be worthy can”.. oh wait wrong hammer. No this one is just really heavy. They soon find the beast, a narwhaal worm, a massive armored horned worm. Phrasing. So naturally Braddock and Percy want to opt out... but Sasha chooses going after the worm over honoring her promise, and hooking the things horn to ride it to the tower. They just need to bring the hammer there.... even if it costs her friends their lives and saftey and involves betraying them. And this creates a marvelous parallel to the other episode in this pairing: Anne time and time again puts her family and girlfriend, random strangers and even an enemy’s life above her own. To Anne it’s helping other people what’s important damn what happens to her. If she’s cold, buired or something else fine. What matters is someone else is safe. Sasha by contrast.. is willing to risk herself and other sif it means getting waht she wants. It’s her will to matters.. and it’s her lack of empathy that’s holding her back. Anne is strong because she has her new family, Marcy, and an army of loayal friends in Wartwood. Sasha may be strong in ablility.. but her weakness in heart costs her. She has grime.. btu that end sup being it as while they sucessfully arrive and get the troops they need.. Braddock and Percy can’t bear the cost or danger or the hurt of Sasha’s betryal and depart with Grime noting that getting what you want costs. But as we’ve seen with Anne and Marcy’s respective temples, it was doing the right thing NOT getting what they wanted, that made them better as people and got further. And as the look on Sasha’s face shows as her friends depart her, and she realizes she’s almost entirely alone.. she’s not sure world domination is really WHAT she wants. OR that it was worth the prices she keeps having to pay.

Final Thoughts:

Barrel’s Warrhamer is another masterpiece following sasha. While not as strong as Toadcatcher it’s still damn good, showing Sasha’s further travels down a bad road, and her starting to doubt if this path is really worth it. The acting and animation are topnotch, as is the world building. It’s a truly stellar showing that just ratchets up tension for the fianle.. and for the inteivitble reunion between our three heroines and the clash between their three sides; the king Marcy serves without realizing his true malevoence, the Toads Sasha and grime are leading to war.. and the frogs Anne once swore to protect that are about to be swept up in the tides of war.. and possibly take a stand against both sides. War is coming for our heroines and they are not ready for the hell that is to come.. and neither am I. Frog this is going to be painful isn’t it?

If you liked this review follow me for more, shoot me an ask or comment with your own thoughts, send me a dm if you want to comission a review and join my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet so I can keep making these reviews. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#amphibia #sasha waybright #anne boonchuy #marcy wu #hopidiah plantar #joe sparrow #captain grime #percy #braddock #kawaii #barrel's warhammer #the second temple #disney channel

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feralphoenix · 4 years

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BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -#bad and naughty catholics go in the catholic wiggler

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pheita · 3 years

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Introduction

Hello everybody, I am a 37 years old writer from Germany who happens to be bisexual and a spoonie. I am writing since I am 12 and only stop when my health forces me. I am part of Writblr for 3 1/2 years now. I write everything from fantasy to sci-fi to supernatural romance; flash fic to epic novels; usually third person limited but sometimes first person. (That happens only for short things) For NaNoWriMo 2020 I started a modern fantasy/romance for a new adult audience called “Guiding Star” that follows Rodrigo and Liz who are mages with rare magical tattoos, that transform them into some sort of magical superheroes and fight against demons and power-hungry fellow mages as well. Along this they don’t know who the other one is which creates some sort of love triangle between the two of them. You can find the intro and everything I posted regarding background stuff and snippet on the WIP Blog I have an adult supernatural romance series called “Queen of Hell” series that will be 3 books and starts with “No Rest for the Wicked” which follows Josephina “Feena” and Samuel over the course of a little over a year. Feena is a chronic pain patient who is on her journey to check out her bucket list before she commits suicide before the pain reduces her into a state she doesn’t call living anymore. Samuel happens to be the devil himself and gets intrigued by her plan, so he decided to befriend her and help her with her bucket list as good as possible. Both didn’t plan to fall in love but it happens on their way. The second book is called “A Little Wicked” and follows almost directly where “No Rest for the Wicked” left. The aftermath of Feena’s suicide attempt still follows her and Samuel in their new life and it leads to them discovering that God became basically powerless and the highest angels decided to take matters in their own hands which resulted in a civil war among the angels. With the help of the gods and goddesses of the other pantheons, Feena and Sam prepare themselves for the upcoming war and for parenthood. Book three will be called “Raise Hell” and is the big finale in which both sides finally clash and Samuel and Feena have to keep their twin babies save from the plans of the highest ranked angels. Book one and two are already in the state of a finished draft one. Book three is in planning. Another WIP is the adult fantasy “Always Prepared” where you join Nesryn into a world where dragons exist and became the mentors of humankind thousands of years ago. She ends up in the world of Mitresk by accident and now has to find her way back home, survive in a world with dragons and magic, and dodge the political issues of the world. In the end, she has to face the question of what home really means. It also has a finished first draft and two more books are planned with the title of the second one being “The Insane God” which takes part about six years after“Always Prepared” and starts when a new threat rises in the shadows and targets Nesryn and her “not-boyfriend” Lorkin. While fighting for their sanity and survival the gang around Nesryn discovers things the dragons preferred to stay buried forever. You can find snippets, background info and worldbuilding posts over here on my big Page of WIPs where you also can find other WIPs of mine. Page of WIPs I recently created a side blog where I gather all the writing advice and writing information posts to have it in one place. You can find my vault over here. Info Vault I reblog all my short stories and flash fics over to my side-blog pheita-storyteller There is a modern AU for “Always Prepared” which is an erotic romance with Nesryn and Lorkin you can find under the name “Drugs of Love” and you can find the Introduction for Drugs of Love here Recently I decided to turn it into a story of its own with giving the characters new names and changing some things later in second draft. You can also find a big post with all my WIP playlists over here in this sort of masterpost I also dabble into drawing, jewelry making with epoxy resin and other stuff, love cooking and baking, playing on the Playstation, and watching TV. My blog is a mix up of everything funny, useful, strange, and all this mixed up with my own writing or reblogs from mutuals. You can find some of my short stories on Wattpad. I go with Pheita there as well with the same icon. You can’t miss me. If you want to follow me just follow this link And of course, I would love to get asks for the writblr events, even if I post open asks.

#writblr #introduction #me #writing

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sysba · 3 years

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Oooh that elias art has me LOOKING 👀 if you're still doing reviews, can you do one for that game??

ah, i see you like anime boys anon! hdkfj me too 😌🤝✨ and of course, one review coming right up! mind you, this review isn’t gonna be as long and detailed as the others i did because 1) the demo for amr is still fairly short at the moment 2) i’ve only played it once and i’m waiting for an update to replay. so if you see me editing this and adding stuff later you know why lol...

𝕒 𝕞𝕒𝕘𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕓𝕠𝕣𝕟 | my review

GENRE: dark fantasy, high fantasy

STATUS: open WIP demo

VAGUE PLOT: you’re a mage with a dark past and you end up being arrested and executed for a crime you did not commit...

SETTING: fantasy continent of Arvanand

TUMBLR BLOG: mage-parivir

COG FORUM: >>> link <<<

[edited: 23/05/2021]

↠ Main character customization:

gender

sexuality

physical appearance (hair; eyes; skintone; build)

type(s) of magical abilities (alchemy; enchantment; thaum; spiritism)

personality (noble vs pragmatic; charming vs reserved; emotional vs stoic; optimistic vs cynical)

additional abilities (charisma; learning; intrigue)

↠ What I liked:

absolutely love the hints and flashbacks to the mc’s past. you get a vague idea of what happened to them but you’re still left wondering about the details, it’s just so exciting and i really wanna know more!!

eli’s storyline....... so delicious....... if you like childhood friends to lovers with a side of death and despair you will lose your mind over this story. i know i am!

and, while i am a proud eli stan, leon also has such an amazing dynamic- especially if romancing him! not every day you get friends/possibly lovers to tragic enemies to hopefully lovers again.

i love having a competent mc! they’re a talented mage who knows what their doing and they’re just so cool!!

getting to customize the mc’s build (and skintone) is a big plus, i get why it isn’t common but it’s still great to see it

admittedly i’m dumb and having different kind of spells for different kinds of magic can be confusing for me, BUT as a concept? amazing!

i really really love the lore and the worldbuilding so far

getting to choose the type of relationship you have with each character is a great system, i really like how the author has built the romantic/platonic dynamics!

i like that when the mage comes back you can reset all personality stats, it really gives you the idea of rebirth and i’m a sucker for that

↠ Recommended if:

you like thrilling stories that are sort of fast paced; there’s action and battle alongside your usual cute romance scenes and ‘slower’ scenes

you like magic; kind of a must, but if you do like magic you’re gonna have a blast with this game!

you enjoy the idea of being burned to death but coming back even sexier<3

in general, if you take a look at the forum or the author’s blog and think that you might enjoy this story, i seriously recommend you try it!

OVERALL RATING: 9/10, maybe? for now, at least... can’t wait for more!

<<< LINK TO THE GAME >>>

#anonymous #answered #myreviews

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solacefruit · 4 years

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hello! something i really enjoy about your stories is how naturally you blend worldbuilding and stories within the actual story itself - do you have any advice on how to do that effectively? i always worry i'm going to too far into "just listing off facts about the world" in the middle of a story if i try and include TOO much worldbuilding, but i'm a big lover of worldbuilding and have a hard time not planning out every detail

Hello there! Thank you so much. Stories within stories (fun fact: this technique is called mise en abîme or mise en abyme) is something that I’m really enthralled by and that I’ve worked hard to try to get the hang of in my own work, so it’s wonderful to know it’s something you enjoy about my writing! That feels very good to hear.

As far as advice goes, I can offer the following thoughts:

Whatever amount of world-building you think is enough, go slightly under it. What I mean by this is that very often less is more when it comes to building a world (see my notes on Pullman’s Northern Lights here). By using a bit of restraint and cutting things down just a touch on your final edit, you can help yourself resist the thrall of the too much gene that many writers experience when talking about their world-building. Ask yourself “does this need to be here, or am I just excited to share it?”

Unfortunately, if it’s just the latter, it’s probably a good idea to trim it: lean storytelling keeps readers hungry, and hungry readers usually ask for more. Trouble is, as a writer, you’ve got to be the one to remember that it’s always better to leave while a crowd is wanting more than stay until the crowd is begging you to stop. (cough several media series we could mention cough)

An example of this would be in a world where there are ten gods. In your first chapter, you don’t need to list all the gods. You can maybe mention one or two, and perhaps imply there’s more. Immediately, that creates mystery and a sense of a larger world; a reader gets to wonder, who are these other gods...

You mentioned you’re a planner, so I want to reassure you: keeping the story trim doesn’t mean all your planning is wasted! If you, the writer, knows the details of your world, it will come through in everything you write. The fact you know all the answers means you have a lot of control over what you want to reveal, when, where, and how. Which leads me to:

When possible, world-build obliquely. What I mean by this is that a lot of world-building can be done in subtle ways, that leave impressions of the world without having to be told directly by a character. You also can stretch out details, sprinkling them only here and there, meaning that it takes multiple chapters to piece together concepts or institutions or other world-building elements.

Doing this can help make it never feel like an exposition dump or listing off facts, because you’re putting only tasty little morsels in (sometimes hidden) for readers to find or look back on later. The reason for it is the same as why keepers will scatter-feed animals in enclosures: enrichment. If you dump it all in one place, the animal will eat, get full and/or bored, and won’t feel good. But if you make it into a puzzle to solve, the emotional reward of finding and figuring things out for yourself is so much nicer than whatever you’re finding, usually. (Sorry to keep using animal metaphors for readers, but like... it works).

An example of this would be something like:

Anwar turned the corner onto the opulent mosaic path of the shrine district and continued towards the temple of Kenuf, furthest from the city centre. On either side, acolytes of all kinds were leaving offerings--jars of salt for Meshut, baskets of yellow lilies for Pesht--and the air was thick with the smell of incense, making his eyes water slightly. He walked as quickly as he could past the grinning crocodile faces carved on the outer wall of the second last temple, before greeting the black-robed bell-keeper outside of Kenuf’s shrine.

I’ve made this up off the cuff so none of it “means” anything, but if we look at what’s here, we learn the following:

there’s at least four gods, possibly more

Pesht’s devotees leave yellow lilies, but we don’t know what Pesht is god of yet

Meshut’s devotees leave jars of salt, but ditto above

Kenuf’s shrine is furthest from the city (does this imply it is least favoured? or maybe least used?)

all gods seem to be named in consonant-e pattern (pe-, me-, ke-), but we don’t know yet if this is meaningful or coincidental (but if you wanted it to be, make all gods and maybe royals have this same pattern and just... leave it. let your reader infer from the text that the pattern signifies divinity)

the unnamed god is represented by crocodile iconography

the bell-keeper of Kenuf wears black robes (is this a uniform, or just a fashion choice?)

Anwar does not feel comfortable with the unnamed god in this passage (scared? disdainful? a mystery...)

A “too much” passage would offer lengthy descriptions of every shrine, listing what the offerings were and what the acolytes and other staff wore and Anwar’s thoughts about how he felt about each of the ten gods. It’s not impossible to write something like that that’s good, I do want to point out! But if you’re looking to slim things down, less is more, space out details over multiple chapters.

Write for your ideal reader, who is clever and attentive. Some writers fall into the habit of over-explaining their world (resulting in info-dumping) because they don’t trust their readers to get the “right” vision of their world, or because they’re worried readers will overlook all the cool stuff they’ve put in. I can recommend not doing this and part of getting to that point is imagine you’re writing for the perfect reader of your story, who does get it and will look for all the cool clever tricky things you sneakily put in. Will every reader be that person? Definitely not! But if you write for that reader, you will elevate your work, rather than dumb it down and make it heavy with unneeded hand-holding.

This kind of overlaps with the above in the sense that it boils down to “you’re allowed to leave things out, let readers make the intellectual leaps based on the pieces you give them” but it’s also saying that you’re allowed to let things rest. Put in subtle symbolism and never draw attention to it.

Additionally, as the creator, you know all the information about the world, which is a huge power and means you can choose the exact right moments to reveal meaningful, revelatory details. For example, somewhere around chapter three or four:

Anwar closed the door of his room, walked to the wall shrine, and fell to his knees, pulling the curtain aside.

“Ye’emer, it is done,” he said, looking at the floor. “It is finally done.”

In the distance, the bells of the temple of Kenuf began to ring: a strident sound, sharp and mournful. The dawn acolytes must have found the body already.

He reached forward, carefully placing the offering on the black silk of the tiny altar. The chips of animal bone looked like stars at night, bright white in the dark.

“I don’t know why you chose me,” said Anwar, forcing himself to look up.

The burning eyes of the crocodile statue stared back.

And now you get to go ohhhh. You know the name of the god now, you know the offering, you know (or at least can speculate better at) why Anwar felt so uncomfortable near the temple. If you time when you reveal world-building details, you can make them do so much work for you in telling your story.

Make up lies about your world--or at least, untruths. This maybe sounds counter-intuitive, but there is a logic in it. Most of us are not experts on our world, and your characters should be the same. They should be biased in their perspective, or limited by what they know, or perhaps even inclined to embellish details. If two characters talk about the same event, make them have personal feelings about it! Unless your character is a historian, their account of a historical event probably isn’t going to be totally correct or certain about all the details, and that’s not a bad thing. You can use that to weave in ambiguity or intrigue, or leave out important facts that will become relevant later, or contradict it later with a different telling and make the protagonist have to question who to trust or what’s the truth.

As a species, everything we do is stories. The concept of a nation is a story we tell ourselves about what it is to be “us.” Who we each are is a story we are always telling to ourselves: I am me because I do x, I am me because I don’t do y. Often, these things aren’t The Truth so much as they are A Truth, so when it comes to writing stories into your stories, don’t forget to think about the stories characters are telling themselves about who they are. And remember that all characters are unreliable narrators, because they’re people and they’re filtering the world through their perspective. You can do so much with that.

Use stories to create meaningful parallels for the larger narrative. If you’re featuring a story (which I’ll call tale from here, to cut down on confusion) within your story, it needs to be doing something more than just telling the reader facts about the world or passing the time. One way to make sure you’re doing that is thinking about parallels, which is to say, think of how the tale can impact the “real world” of your story. This might be the protagonist having a realisation or plot breakthrough, or later deciphering out important information or applying ideas from the story to a problem they encounter.

You also can (and often should) create tonal and emotional parallels within the tale as well and/or use tales as a form of foreshadowing. For a very basic example, in a story that involves a protagonist who gets trapped in a big horrible maze later in the book might feature a version of Minotaur in the Labyrinth as foreshadowing, and the character might have a fleeting thought about it that later will resurface with new significance.

I hope some of this is helpful to you! Good luck with you writing, and please write in again if there’s anything I can help with.

tl;dr: my tips are:

do a little less and space out what you tell your reader

don’t say directly what you can imply or gesture vaguely at

write cleverly and time your moments

make use of ambiguity

make the story impact the real world

#reply #advice #i really hope some of this makes sense. it's a difficult question to answer in a post #because honestly you could do six weeks of seminars just on world-building. this is like a hyper condensed minimal example version.

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inventors-fair · 4 years

Text

Lessons Unlearned: Short Story Commentary and Reflection

Well. 21 entries isn’t exactly a 50+ commander extravaganza, but that’s where we’re at. This contest made a lot of sense to me, in my own head, and I think I got lost in the concept without considering the full execution, or that Other People Might Not Think Quite Exactly Like Me.

Still, I would say that almost all the entries created their own unique worlds, some plane-based, some personal, and it made for great and creative reading. I feel that something more concrete would help a contest like this in the future, like... Well, I’ll have to save that for another time.

Onto the commentary!

@abzanhero — Captain Morgan the Vengeful

The Card: It’s interesting design space you’re playing with here, and I’m actually a fan. You could pump him up to a 2/2 for a little battlefield presence, but it’s not out of the question. The fact that there’s not consistent graveyard tutelage means that he’s not as overpowered as he could be, and it’s only one counter, which... Admittedly, it’s powerful, but there are a few moving parts to make this less than incredibly overpowered. I’d rather the trigger happen at the end step for that “final fate” feel, personally. Minor templating: “shuffle it into your library” (only planeswalkers get personal pronouns), and I think contemporary design supports “when you do” as a trigger to respond to instead of “if you do.”

The Story: Ha, it rhymes! ... And yeah, it doesn’t precisely explain the ins and outs of the curse, but it’s swashbuckling as hell. It’s one degree off-kilter to have a rhyme that isn’t part of a meta-tale, but I like it, so. I can imagine younger players doing their best pirate voice as they shuffle him (the character, not the card, I know, pedantry) into their library. Arr.

@dimestoretajic — Eternal Bond

The Card: I had to go through the Zendikar image gallery to make sure, but yeah, “party members” isn’t a term. I believe this card would read “Exile two target creatures in a party. (reminder text)” And it would be “combined” toughness, right? Either way, this is a hyperspecific and expensive removal spell, at rare, with a modest amount of lifegain. That simply doesn’t feel good, and I’m not getting a feeling of a “bond” out of, well, a removal spell. Let’s move on.

The Story: So, a kind of love story, framed around a removal spell? That already doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t have anything positive to say about the writing itself, so for Magic critique, I’ll say that it doesn’t feel like a Magic card or part of a Magic world, absolutely not Zendikar. There’s a time and place for those kinds of cards, such as Cathartic Reunion and Planewide Celebration. But Magic doesn’t need single-card love stories, unless they’re remarkably well-written.

@fractured-infinity — Baddon, Rivstalt’s End

The Card: Okay, that IS a real town in Innistrad. Had to check that. Anyway, man, someone would love to make a commander out of this bad boy. Kinda eh that he doesn’t do anything specific on his own, but the death effect is cool as-is, I suppose. The only issue is that HOO BOY you are going to have a LOT of memory issues with all your Zombie tokens capital Z. It’s flavorful and I think it would be worth doing, but the second part... Nah, keep it simple. 3UB, no protection, just Zombies, and you’re golden.

The Story: I’m having a really hard time parsing your writing. It took a couple reads to understand that he’s talking about... Well, actually, I don’t know. What do emotional bonds have to do with taking the town, or damaging the bodies? How does that work? Do we get that anywhere else in the story? Hate to say it, but this little snippet doesn’t really make much sense in or out of context, without heavy inference about the world that we don’t really get.

@gollumni — Tempest Serpent

The Card: I love the idea of off-color emerge! Emerge was a fantastic mechanic and I feel that it could come back again. It creates some really neat draft ideas that unfortunately may bend a lot of the pie rules. But also. A three mana 3/3 flying hexproof? That’s OP at uncommon, no question, good lord. Small templating note: Flying comes before hexproof, and the second should be lowercase.

The Story: I can just see the art of a guy on a boat cowering as the ship snaps in half and a massive stormy elemental electric snake monster BLOWS UP outta the ocean ready to eat him. It’s cool how it’s not about the serpent itself, but rather the human/NPC interacting with the serpent. It’s not Hemingway, but you conveyed something great! I liked this story.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes — Gravedigger of the Order

The Card: I don’t get how all these parts come together. Pro zombies, sure, she’s a zombie caller. The blocking/blocked trigger, uh, I don’t see that coming up a lot considering that she’s only a 2/2 with no significant combat-oriented keywords. And the last ability implies a strong return mechanic that I’ll admit makes a lot of cool sense with your flavor but doesn’t translate to perfect gameplay. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t grok this card, but it feels like there was cohesion sacrificed in favor of flavor.

The Story: Well, this sure as heck ain’t Innistrad. I’m curious about where this would take place, and what kind of world you’re going for here. Let’s try looking at it from an isolated perspective. It’s an alright macabre story, so I’ll give you that. But the name. What is the “Order?” Is she part of it? Do all members of the order whisper to bones like her? I don’t understand her goals and motivations, what “kindness” she whispers, why the dead are coming back at all.

@ignorantturtlegaming — Demonic Mentor

The Card: It feels unplayable and yet extremely playable at the same time. It’s expensive and creates some really crazy shenanigans in Commander with surplus life. Oh my goodness, Oloro would LOVE this card, good GOD. It’s unfortunate that it does have to be costed this way and that it makes sense for a tutor. I believe the wording could be adjusted to one chunk of text: (using Covetous Urge and Thief of Sanity as references)

“Search target player’s library for up to X cards and exile them, then that player shuffles their library and you lose X life. You may cast those cards for as long as they remain exiled and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast those spells.”

The Story: I don’t get it. What does having a demonic mentor have to do with brother rescue? I assume this is part of a larger story, but we don’t have that story for context, and mentorship doesn’t have to do with rescue. This is a card about tutelage and power and losing life, not losing a mind. The library is so often represented as the mind, and you’re not losing that, you’re saving part of it. Really iffy on this one, despite the coolness of the card. Also, watch out - you switched tenses in the second sentence.

@macaroni-and-squeez — The Iroan Race

The Card: RRR for haste, sure, whatever, that’s fine in this day and age, if a little color-heavy. But this card isn’t meant for limited. This is a build-around-me if I ever saw one. “Four instances of haste”?? I don’t want to call that brilliant because it frustrates my sensibilities, but dammitall, it’s...it works. For those of you doubting me, the Zendikar Rising release notes for Attended Healer states “Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.” So, if that is to be believed, this card is designed for some combo player to go nuts with haste nonsense. Or maybe I’m just reading it wrong. Either way, I like this card. But I would make it win the game for you, not anyone else.

The Story: Sure, I’m into it. A guy running a race for Iroas checks out. I would have condensed it a little, but in general, yeah, it fits the world and makes a neat little story. I’m really hung up on the name “Kris.” That...doesn’t feel like a fantasy name as much. I mean, we have things like Gideon, and Judith, etc. but Kris? I can’t help but feel that it’s a smidge too out of touch with Theros worldbuilding. Yay, nitpicks.

@milkandraspberry — Burn Down the Library

The Card: Conceptually, this card is pretty cool. Very strange. It’s a different take on anti-blueness in red, and I can go for it. Sorry about MSE and fonts. Reinstallation is a pain but it’s possible. Anyway. I wouldn’t call this card a breakout all-star, but it would be...fun, I suppose. A good combat trick enchantment thing. Shame it doesn’t do much if you have an empty hand. With wording: Use “can’t” instead of “cannot cannot.” Use “cast blue spells” instead of “play;” that’s been phased out for a while. You also can’t discard spells, but you can discard blue CARDS. Question: what if you couldn’t cast blue spells from your hand? Eh? Eh? Flashback and madness? Ehhhhhh?

The Story: This time, I’ll give an example of how this could be shortened. “After years of fruitless study, the young scholar found a better use for her teacher’s wisdom.” Maybe “frustrated young scholar,” or something to give her motivation. Why is she burning down the library? That’s the most important question to ask. “Because she felt like it” is the obvious answer, but that’s not motivation, that’s not intrigue. We have to ask “why,” always. Your story makes sense, but it’s just on the brink of great characterization.

@nine-effing-hells — Arch-Evoker’s Capstone

The Card: I want to like it, and I probably do. I don’t know what kind of deck would play it, as it feels like a Commander card for sure, but yeah, I think I do like it. It’s got powerful stuff attached to it with very red sensibilities. The land destruction is pretty wild, but it’s expensive as hell. Or is it? Five mana to destroy two lands... That’s actually, hm. That’s actually really, really, super strong if this were to see any limited play. You may even have to make it XXRR to get around that if you want to keep that effect. Land destruction is unfun. (I <3 Ponza though, so)

The Story: With this specific card, I wouldn’t have recommended also adding three lines of flavor text on top of four paragraphs of rules text. Additionally, um, I don’t get that last line. “It wasn’t every day the horizon was on fire for a week straight”? It’s exerting too much effort without a strong effect on the reader. Edit and save for a card without as much rules text.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff — Spiraling Depression

The Card: Buries? What opponent? Is this targeting? Is this an edict effect? Least power among creature they control, I assume? I legitimately don’t know what you’re trying to do with this card. Wretched Banquet-esque?

The Story: Instead of attempting to give this flavor text legitimate critique, I would instead advise you that referencing real-world conditions such as “spiraling depression” without a critical lens might appear as insensitive to individuals legitimately suffering from those conditions.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Blazing Sacrifice

The Card: I really love this card, actually. The choice to do CMC over power I would argue requires playtesting, and I would prefer power to compare to other cards in the family such as the lovely Fling, but I can see the argument against it. Yeah, not much to critique or add onto that front. You made a really great card mechanically.

The Story: And then the story lost me entirely. “monsters that would surely go on to destroy everything he loved” is clunky to say the least. “Surrounded by monsters” is fine, it’s decent, it gets the job done. Monsters are monsters, that’s that. But that last line. That’s...a D&D reference, right? I can’t take that seriously, I just can’t. It’s verging on cliche, and it makes sense on a rudimentary level but adds nothing to the Magic world. I’ll be the first to say that yes, it’s personal bias and that some players would appreciate the memetic qualities, but it simply doesn’t do it for me.

@scavenger98 — Walking Stick

The Card: It...is a stick. You know, I think I like this one, and frankly I would consider it for constructed play. I’m a Krenko guy, what can I say. But yeah, it’s fun, it’s fragile, it’s got good equip synergy, and I might actually be underestimating its power. I don’t know, is there some crazy combo that you could do with it? This stick is made for walking, not fighting. Heh. Good flavor tie.

The Story: And there it is, right? It’s kinda funny how it’s implied that the whole story about this thing is that this piece of equipment is breaking. And that’s kinda what makes me on the fence about it. Like, if you had a creature, and the text was about the creature dying, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense, right? Maybe if the text was about Bredik fearing the day when he WOULD face a sword? Eh, I’m just being picky here. I think that it’s still pretty good. I like Bredik. He’s not a fighter, but he walks very fast.

@tmstage — Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

The Card: Yeah, once again, looking at Zendy Risey, I think the wording would be different than “full party.” I’ve been sitting here and I can’t come up with a better way to word it, but it still doesn’t mesh well even if it groks. And it’s a situational card that’s either going to do literally nothing or it’s going to destroy four creatures for one mana. That’s...not great. Hey. I understand if you don’t like a specific mechanic, but I’ve seen some really great ideas from your neck of the woods. Let’s keep going.

The Story: Technically, uh, this does not fit the criteria. Who was praying to the vengeful god? Was it the creatures in the other party? Is there a god of making rocks fall down? What’s up with the name, anyway? There’s a strong sense of disconnect and many questions that go unanswered. But considering all the factors that are going into this card, I have a feeling they aren’t really asking to be answered anyway.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path — Marathon of Mogis

The Card: Wow, I wasn’t expecting two Theros-themed God-themed enchantments that gave a number of creatures haste. Great minds and all. So, this card. I don’t think you need to reference the active player. The whole thing can be toned down a little. “At the beginning of each player’s combat (or end?) step, that player sacrifices all creatures they control that didn’t deal combat damage to a player this turn.” Keeping it simple. Honestly, though, I...am not sure I like it for four mana. It feels like a game-ender kind of card. Frankly, I would make it six. And I know that’s a lot and I know that it might be too much, but to be honest, this would be an unfun card otherwise, in my opinion. It’s really, REALLY powerful for a clock.

The story: Is that Mogis’ deal? Does he make people run? I checked the wiki and read through it all and I don’t understand why Mogis would get pleasure out of people not dying. The point of the stampedes and the destruction is to invoke slaughter and sacrifice, not to run humans to the bone. The ferocity of minotaurs is not sadistic. This feels like a Rakdos card — the cult, not the color combo. I feel that there was a misunderstanding.

@wolkemesser — Otherskin Scarecrow

The Card: I’ll go out on a limb and say that you could make this a little more Horizons-y and give this card Changeling instead of just saying it has all creature types. Could that make it a shapeshifter? Hm, what if, because it wears clothing from characters in the past, it also has the creature types of all creatures in graveyards? But I digress. Anyway, this card. It’s not bad! It’s not making me super excited, but it’s not bad. You meant for this to have a Reaper King vibe, right? Or at least to work well with it? I think you succeeded.

The Story: Love the first sentence, don’t quite understand the second one. My interpretation is that it’s taking skin from others, right? Well! Um! That’s actually scary and makes me miss the world of Lorwynmoor even moor. Er, more. It’s unfortunate that the mechanics of the card don’t necessarily depict “skinning intruders alive and taking their identity in a grotesque fashion” as much as I’d personally like. Still, that’s a risk, and you know what, the implications aren’t super strong but it’s enough for me to grok.

Once again, thank y’all for your entries. New contest tomorrow. Be prepared. Be scared. Be....ard.

-@abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #contest #entries #short story #commentary #inventor's fair

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fyrapartnersearch · 3 years

Text

historical dramas, alternate universes, video game fandoms, nhl & the crown

hello!

I’m going to make this fairly short (or at least try to haaA). I am looking for 1-2 new rp partners! I work two jobs and have a pretty active lifestyle so please understand this is a hobby for me. My posting speed ranges from once every couple of days to once every week or so, but I'll always let you know when I'm busy or hitting roadblocks. Some of my stories have really slowed down so I'm looking to have a rp going that is at a pace of at least 1-2 replies every couple of weeks.

I love detailed plots and stories; crafting good posts is a huge part of why I love rping. I match/mirror my partner’s length and put a high amount of importance on compatibility as writers. Good grammar, punctuation, spelling is A Thing for me. I put 110% in. I write fully lit to novella style rps with my posts ranging from 900-1800 words average. If you want a partner that’s invested in writing together and all the joy that brings, I’m your person!

I am looking for original period piece/historical drama roleplays full of drama and angst, fallout related roleplays, roleplays centered on fictional NHL players, slice-of-life or modern romances, and a few more.

what do I write?

I can write f/m, m/m, and m/f pairings- doesn't really matter to me so long as the plot and characters are compelling. I love smut just as much as anyone but I need a good story and solid character development to go back on. I want to feel something when we write and I hope you do too! I don't have a ton of limits when it comes to kink etc aside from the basic ones, but generally each of the characters I write have varied and different interests and preferences. I'm interested in writing the following fandoms right now:

Transformers personified: Essentially, utilizing characters from the Transformers universe to make characters and stories based off of them/using them in a personified manner. We could depict the war as a political one, or with warring armies, or anything we wanted to do. I'm most familiar with Transformers Prime, and I would be really excited to talk this one over with you!

Disney personified: Similar to the idea above, we take stories/characters and springboard them into our own content and plots. Let's talk it out!

The Outer Worlds: Admittedly I haven't finished the game yet, but I would love to do some character and world building here. Canon characters could be brought in if needed.

Fallout: New Vegas: I can do OCs for this, or I can play several canon characters such as Arcade Gannon, The King, and Cass. Either way, I'd be more than happy to plot with you in this world. I'm also interested in playing out a story related to Fallout 4, where I can play Elder Maxson or Paladin Danse, or we can write OCs.

X-Men: Give me all the plots utilizing Jean Grey or Wolverine, those are my favorite canon characters to write. I can also write OCs. I would also love to play Wolverine against a Jean Grey. All in all, I am a happy camper with this one.

The Crown/British Monarchy: I have a niche interest in the British monarchy and figures related to it, specifically George VI, Elizabeth II. I'd love to take the concepts and maybe the figures and write out some stories, historically-based or not, that involve some of the character types, situations and challenges faced. This idea is really flexible and I'd love to do some world-building here!

Mafia 2: I can write a pretty decent Vito Scaletta and I'd love to write him against your OC. We can take the premise and play with it, maybe make a spinoff or a sequel, something like that.

The Man in the High Castle: I would love, love, love to write something set in this universe. We'd definitely have to do some worldbuilding here but I would love to figure something out based around this universe and the characters in it.

Right now I also have a huge interest in doing period pieces/setting slice-of-life stories in different historical settings. I'd really love to do some plotting together and come up with an intriguing original story. I would love to do stories with the backdrop of the first or second world war, the great depression, the turn of the century, etc etc. I think so many of my plot ideas would be much more interesting placed against different historical settings. I'm most familiar with 1900-1960s backdrops but I would love to explore earlier (little women, or pride and prejudice-esque) eras as well! Pleeease get @ me if you're interested in a healthy dose of history with whatever twists we can come up with :) Here are a few plots/prompts to get started:

**** (m/m) sugar daddy: My oc is a law student studying in your oc’s country in order to get their degree abroad. They’re from eastern Europe and uh. broke af. They settle into an arrangement with your oc where your oc agrees to ~pay him for his company~. We could take it anywhere- your oc could whisk mine off his feet and ‘save’ him or. Be toxic & trashy and make my oc’s life hell.

****(m/m) the guardian: Your oc is a newcomer to the NHL but is quickly making waves- think Connor McDavid style. He’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. After a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. My oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. Not to mention… huge hands. Good for makin’ fists. Good for fightin’. My oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. As such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. Possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: Our ocs start out in the WHL, both as promising wingers. Their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. However, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an NHL draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. The two excel in their NHL careers without one another, and end up on NHL teams with a history of deep rivalry. Occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. The two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them.

***(m/m) big money: These two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. Audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. There’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. If the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over.

My oc has serious commitment issues. They often go around leaving individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. Your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits.

Your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s hockey or political career. Your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. While my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc.

My oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. Your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. They develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship.

My oc and your oc are in an arranged marriage. My oc is actually a spy on your oc's national government. Espionage, reconnaissance, and betrayal abound.

My oc is royalty (think British monarchy) and yours is, absolutely not; either a reporter, a soldier, maybe a business person. My oc has taken interest in yours as a friend to keep them grounded... or as a thin veil for a romance that absolutely no one would approve of.

As for general OC ideas, here’s a list:

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

small town canadiana or americana

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

WWI / WWII history based

something based around the Titanic (I know, so cheesy)

alternate history — I would love to work on doing some worldbuilding with you and creating some kind of retro-futuristic alt history IE fallout before the nukes dropped.

estate drama — something akin to Downton Abbey but with our own spin on it

honestly whatever you can pitch to me that isn’t high fantasy :)

I can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just topics. Whatever I do with you, I promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama.

how do we get started?

Pleaaase send me an email at [email protected]; I can give you my discord if we hit it off. Please give me some of your thoughts/an idea of why/what you’d like to write with me! I can write over discord or email or both. We can sort out the brass tacks there and figure out if we’re a good match. :) Thanks for your time and I hope I hear from you!

#Indie rp #oc rp #multiple paragraph #para #long term #literate #adventure #drama angst #historical #original #romance #slice of life #submission

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irandrura · 4 years

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I will aim for three posts, I think, trying to give some general feelings on Three Houses after completing one route (Azure Moon). This post will be on world and plot, and will have a mixture of things I liked and things I thought could be improved. The second one will be on characters and will be mostly positive. The third one will be a grab bag of other thoughts on mechanics, tone, where I think 3H fits into the series’ overall trajectory, and other things that occur to me.

It’s also worth noting that at this point I think I’ll grant myself license to read spoilers for the other routes. This is mainly because I don’t think it’s reasonable to need to play dozens more hours, many of which just repeat content I’ve already done, in order to get a full picture of the plot. That said, I realise that reading a wiki and skimming the odd chapter transcript are not substitutes for the experience of actually playing a route, so I will not make any judgement on the other three routes in terms of quality. I do intend to play at least Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind at some point, and that should be a richer experience than just reading, but I probably won’t start another forty-to-fifty hour journey straight away.

So, world and plot!

I think worldbuilding is one of Three Houses’ strengths, and is definitely a big step up after Fates and Awakening. Fódlan’s worldbuilding is not perfect, and sometimes has a few cringeworthy elements – in particular the King Lear references in the Alliance are a bit cheesy – but for the most part it successfully presents itself as a rich, interesting world, containing diverse cultures, and a complex history.

The sense of history is particularly important to me, especially compared to the last few games. I’m glad that the game goes to some effort to give Adrestia, Faerghus, and Leicester a sense of a shared past, full of rivalries and alliances. I can imagine setting other stories at different points in Fódlan’s history – Loog’s revolt, the occupation of Brigid and invasion of Dagda, the Almyran invasion, etc. – and those stories still being interesting and fun to play. I can imagine using Fódlan, perhaps centuries in the past, perhaps in the future, as a D&D campaign setting and it being quite interesting. That to me is a sign of good worldbuilding. If the world could easily play host to many different stories, not just the one I’m currently playing, then it can probably stand on its own quite well. This contrasts strongly with, say, Nohr and Hoshido, which felt like they were really just built for Corrin’s adventure.

I also appreciate that it’s not just ancient history that matters, but also the twenty years or so before the game begins. The heroes did not burst on to the scene ex nihilo, but all come out of particular historical situations. Events like the Insurrection of the Seven or the Tragedy of Duscur give you context for what happens in the game. The heroes generally have parents and families, and those families are relevant. They all come from somewhere, and while the details often aren’t described, what you get is enough to start imagining their home lives, and what might be going on elsewhere in the world. I really liked that and felt it was missing from the last few games. Can you imagine asking most of the Shepherds about their familes, or about the lands where they grew up?

Similarly, the range of visible cultures is one that I quite appreciate. Even outside Fódlan itself, mentions of Dagda, Brigid, Sreng, and Almyra help to make the world feel populated. That’s only the other regions that we know much about: there’s also Morfis, Albinea, and Mach, so the world is clearly quite large. Further, these different regions all have some noticeable cultural traits: the people of Brigid are animists and believe in many spirits, the Almyrans are a warrior culture and seem vaguely Persian, and so on. Within Fódlan there are visible differences as well, so the titular three houses are nicely differentiated.

The role of crests in shaping the continent also appealed to me. I believe I commented before that it reminds me of Birthright, an AD&D setting from the 90s that I have a soft spot for. While crests aren’t quite as powerful as Birthright’s bloodlines and don’t have exactly the same effects, the idea of aristocrats with real superpowers passed down in the bloodline, but which if abused can twist people into horrible monsters, was quite reminiscent of that setting. It’s a premise I’ve always found relatively intriguing, and I like that Three Houses does spend a little while exploring the social stratification that crests have produced. There are some interesting marriage politics going on because of crests; that’s really fun for me. Nonetheless I think the game also takes the right approach by not making crests too overpowering, and by firmly asserting that a person’s worth is not dependent on whether they have a crest or not. If it hadn’t done that, crests might have had some uncomfortable implications.

That said if I have one quibble it would be etymological. I understand that the Empire is vaguely Germano-Nordic, Leicester is vaguely English, and Faerghus is Franco-Celtic, but these aren’t always incredibly consistent, and names can sometimes be a bit surprising. The name ‘Dimitri’, for instance, stands out as being slightly out of place. I suppose its origin, ‘Demetrius’, is a Latin name and thus appropriate enough, but today I hear ‘Dimitri’ as Slavic, which doesn’t fit the established pattern for Faerghus. Still, this is a minor quibble.

The one exception to my general praise for the worldbuilding is the church, which I think is a huge mess. Maybe another route fleshes this out, but from what I played, it is extremely unclear to me how the church actually works. Was there a previous archbishop, or has Rhea been succeeding herself over and over, changing her name each time? How has the church been involved in history? We’ve had the occasional mention of cardinals, possibly with secret identities, but they’re entirely invisible and don’t seem to do anything. I would have liked more details on the church and how it fits into Fódlan’s history, because right now it feels like the anomaly, to me.

Moving on to the plot…

This had a number of issues, in my opinion.

Azure Moon was very much Dimitri’s story. In some ways I like that Byleth is simply not very important to the story. You are not the hero; you are the hero’s mentor. Byleth is more active than, say, Mark was in Blazing Sword, but still fades into the background compared to the true protagonist. However, I have to stand by the judgement that Dimitri’s redemption was too fast, and it probably would have been better to drop some of the church-related content for this route and spend more time exploring the characters and relationships that are at the heart of this story. Azure Moon is about Dimitri, Dedue, Felix, Sylvain, Annette, and probably Ingrid at the core: this rising generation of Faerghus nobility, with the long shadow of the past over them, struggling to overcome the sins of yesteryear and the cycle of revenge in order to build a better world. This story is good and I liked it, but a bit more polish and focus could have made it shine.

In terms of actual events, though, I have to say that a lot of things in the story didn’t make a lot of sense. The most obvious case is probably the rematch at Gronder Field. I understand the desire for a three-way battle there as adults, a rematch that contrasts dramatically with the mock battle they fought as students. However, as cool as the scene is, I don’t feel the set-up for it made a lot of sense: in particular Claude and Dimitri have no reason to fight each other. Dimitri might still be bloodthirsty and vengeance-obsessed, but that should translate to a charge straight at Edelgard, and Claude seems cunning enough to let that happen without getting in the way. There might surely have been better ways to set up a conflict there, especially since the writers have the get-out-of-jail-free card of a faction of evil shapeshifters trying to foment conflict. All you need is for a few Slitherers to deliver false messages or instigate a skirmish or two to start a battle based on a tragic misunderstanding.

Similarly, my confusion at the Leicester Alliance disbanding and the Kingdom absorbing the Empire remains present. I can guess that they wanted every route to end with Fódlan united into a single realm, but in this particular story it seemed strange, given how much the story had focused on freeing Faerghus from Imperial occupation and on defeating Edelgard. Dimitri’s ambitions were personal, rather than the grand schemes to reorganise Fódlan politically that both Edelgard and Claude have.

I wonder if there might be an unspoken cultural difference here? As someone from a Western European background, I am quite comfortable with the idea that many different nations can rightly exist on the same continent, and see coexisting self-determining territories as a quite good result; but perhaps in Japan it might be more natural to think that “an empire divided longs to unite”? The game begins with the territories of the ancient Adrestian Empire split into three nations now. Perhaps, like Warring States of either China or Japan, they must be united back into one? Three Houses to parallel Three Kingdoms, perhaps? The Japanese title of the game does not mention Three Houses, to be fair, but the title is an allusion to classical Chinese poetry, so I wonder what assumptions or resonances might be in the background.

Moving along, the logistics of war in general stood out to me as rather odd. I can’t tell whether you’re supposed to be canonically returning the entire army to the monastery in between every battle or not, but even if you’re not, you march all over the continent with very little regard for things like plausible logistics. Invading the Empire, winning a battle at Gronder, and then stopping to run all the way back up to Fhirdiad and liberate it in a single battle seemed particularly odd, especially when you also somehow make time to visit Arianrhod way out in the west. I wouldn’t be that strict about this in most games, but Three Houses does have that lovely detailed map and shows coloured lines with armies moving around, so I felt that it drew attention to one of its own weak points. Here I think the game contrasts negatively with the Tellius pair, which also feature a bunch of continent-wide wars, but generally seem to avoid bizarre logistics.

Finally, let’s talk about the ending. As I mentioned in one of the linked posts above, I was a bit surprised that there was no resolution to the Slitherers subplot in this arc. I liked the scene where Dimitri asks Edelgard why she did all of this before the final battle, but unfortunately they just talk about ideals. If I were Edelgard I might have mentioned the part where I did all this at the behest of – while also hoping to turn on and destroy – a faction of evil subterranean wizards who have been fomenting conflict throughout all of Fódlan’s history. I might also have mentioned the part where I believe the Church of Seiros is run by a different faction of ancient immortal manipulators, since that also seems key to understanding why Edelgard thought such drastic measures were necessary.

Perhaps that didn’t come up because if Edelgard were to mention those motives, it would quickly become apparent that she has already achieved most of her goals, and there is no more reason to fight. By the time of Edelgard and Dimitri’s fateful meeting, the Slitherers have already been defeated (albeit inadvertently, when we killed Arundel), the Church of Seiros is already shattered, Fódlan is close to being reunited under one government, and both we and Edelgard know that Dimitri wants to establish a more participatory and egalitarian form of government that should resolve some of Edelgard’s worries about crests. If Edelgard were the utilitarian fighting for the greater good that she portrays herself as, she could simply surrender, arrange the sort of peace treaty that Dimitri clearly wants, share all her knowledge with Dimitri and Byleth, and work for a brighter future together.

The final cutscene was thus quite striking to me. By ‘Light and Shadow’, it is extremely clear that the war is over. Even if Edelgard were somehow to successfully kill Dimitri, she would be killed immediately afterwards, and no good could come of it. But Edelgard cannot surrender. It is the one thing she cannot do, that she will never do. After the heart of the story was Dimitri’s redemption, and his painful struggle to turn away from his crimes and start anew, it seems appropriate to draw this line between them.

Both Dimitri and Edelgard did terrible things: he from vengeful passion, she from sincere belief it was for the best. But he could change his ways, grow, and find a new beginning. She never could. At the midpoint of Azure Moon, Byleth offers Dimitri his hand, and taking that hand and accepting help is the point at which Dimitri’s redemption begins. At the end, Dimitri, having learned this lesson, offers Edelgard his hand… but she does not take it.

There were plenty of places where I thought the plot could be improved, in terms of time, pacing, focus, and even practical things like why certain battles happen or how troops get there. But ultimately the story worked for me, I think, because the emotions worked. I can excuse a lot of nonsense if I care about the characters and the emotions resonate. I would rather do that than have a story that makes perfect logistical sense, but in which all the characters are flat and boring.

Next time I’ll talk more about supports and all the other characters.

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toooldforfandom-liveblogs · 4 years

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She-Ra and the Princesses of Power S01E08 - Princess Prom

After that mid-season plot reminder we seem to be going back to the princesses! Is this one going to introduce the ice princess or is it going to be about the princesses meeting each other? Maybe both! Let's do this!

It definitely sounds like it'll be both!

Can't believe that She-Ra has been living for weeks there and no one has thought about giving her a change of clothes. I imagine her going "Sorry guys, can't go meet a princess today, I need to do my laundry AND I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO WEAR" and they just ignore her subtle hints. Nothing like the horde symbol waving like a flag in a clothesline.

Hm. Did Glimmer miss the last one?

FROSTA, OF COURSE. I forgot "Frost” even existed as a possibility.

Someone needs to make an "inhuman adora sounds" twitter acount, like https://twitter.com/animegirlnoises?lang=en

ooh, problems in paradise

Sorry, it needs to be "inhuman princesses sounds." What a shame I can't embed uploaded videos in a text post.

Wow, these subtitles are really missing a lot.

I can't imagine a better (and more frustrating) counterpart to Catra than Scorpia.

I kinda doubt she'll be able to capture Adora so that's one objective down, but I'm intrigued by the way Catra mentions Shadow Weaver. Is it a title instead of a name? I thought SW had changed her name from Light Spinner (since they kinda mean the same)

I can't believe how much this explains Scorpia's personality.

I think Catra is not really talking about Scorpia anymore but it still fits. It's nice that she has someone who feels like her though.

Scorpia is the best. The princesses suck if they discriminated her because of her claws.

How can anyone mistreat her

OH MY GOD

I thought she had sent her a message or something, not that she had asked him during the battle! It completely fits her personality though

Aw, poor Glimmer. The b-side of growing up, everyone else is growing up too. It probably doesn't help that Bow is her only friend besides Adora, and Adora is new.

This is 100% going to lead to Adora revealing she doesn't know how to dance, right?

Wait, NEUTRAL? They can afford to be NEUTRAL?

can't believe Adora is making a ship chart

Is that wing, Glimmer?

I mean... she does, yeah.

I feel blessed by this glimmer

I hadn't realized that maybe _Adora_ is the one who doesn't want new clothes. Now I can't stop imagining everyone in Bright Moon subtly suggesting her to change clothes and Adora completely ignoring everyone.

That’s a great look for Catra.

Aw, Scorpia seemed kinda unsure and only laughed after Catra started laughing. That's sad.

For some reason I feel this has a lot of Sea Hawk energy.

This is incredibly cute for an episode 8 of a first season. It's a testament to the show's characterization that something like this can work so early. You need to know the characters to make a party episode work since they all need to interact together.

I have to admit that dress _does_ fit her better than the fluffy one.

Awww.

...what's up with those two in the lower left being pulled by another woman?

These people seem better defined, future characters maybe?

Hey, that's Spinerella and Netossa!

A lot of these characters look like they came out of the game Monster Prom.

oh that's going to be fun

This show is pretty good at showing perfect examples of "a mood"

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Someone in the discord told me that Entrapta is supposed to be in her late 20s and I still can't believe it. I thought everyone was in their late teens at most. Entrapta in particular feels like a feral kid.

Entrapta should be a liveblogger.

I'm not sure _that's_ what's going on but sure.

I love everything about this, _especially_ Adora's smugness.

oh no, the cringe has begun

That explains why we haven't seen that sociopath horse lately.

yup, fits standard "don't know what to do during a party" behavior

Glimmer is being a bit dumb but everyone's been that type of dumb at least once.

I don't like seeing her sad though, I hope it all blows over soon.

She also looks sad. Saddest prom ever.

I'm wondering if her parents are alive, it's weird that they aren't around considering she's eleven (and three quarters.)

I feel like Bow when he introduced Spinerella and Netossa: "we're not really sure what they do" but they are definitely here.

Well, the child has a strong personality. I expected her to say something like this but I thought she'd be more childish about it. Is her personality because of the weight of her crown or because of a tragic past (or both)?

The slow music that just started is so on the nose that I'm not minding this weird jealousy plot.

Aww, poor marshmallow. This show continues to impress me by the way it develops its characters.

That line about Bow being introduced to Castaspella last episode was setup for this, it wasn't needed since this scene would have worked anyway but tiny touches like that help a lot in making these characters feel real, with a life before the show.

That was amazing.

My respect for Princess Frosta has increased a thousand percent.

Adora is the embodiment of the "if you know how I am, why did you invite me?" meme

ooh, first contact with the horde

Oh Princess Frosta, you were so right: "Teenagers"

Even angry he's still a good boy. He's 100% in the right in this situation, he'd have a free pass if he wanted to get angry but he's just clearly stating what's up.

Nooo, no one is allowed to make this marshmallow cry. Even if they are right and she's wrong.

I hope this doesn't feed "no one is going to want me now that I failed the one thing my one remaining friend told me to do"

Catra is being such a troll and I love it. I probably shouldn't like it so much considering Adora just went through some bad gaslighting and this feels like the continuation of that but Catra's personality softens the impact a lot. Which probably makes it worse, huh.

That face screams "What is the Horde?"

I _did_ say that she was probably pretty good at being bad when she was introduced, even if her personality is awesome.

Oh, didn't expect this. Is that Scorpia's power? Mind control? It'd fit with the poison theme without being literally poison.

When I started watching She-Ra someone tweeted me an screenshot of this with the caption "not as gay as advertised" and I thought "hey, that's neat fanart" but nope, literally an screenshot from the show.

Not sure what that guy was talking about because this is pretty gay.

And this is how they both get kicked out for breaking the no conflict rule. Which probably fits Catra's plan since it gives her a way to escape.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh

To think I believed these guys were going to be credible threats after Lonnie threatened Catra.

Does every castle have a gem like this? Scorpia mentioned something about a Black Garnet...

Okay, I checked back and she says "rune stone" (that doesn't appear in the subtitles * shakes fist *) I'm guessing that's how the princesses recharge their powers?

What a great way to differentiate her from other "child" characters. In other shows she'd need help from the heroes after being taken down a peg but not Frosta, she's saving everyone and is probably going to be _pissed_ at the Horde, angry enough to join the rebellion.

still pretty gay

Wow. This is _not_ what I expected to happen from an episode named "Princess Prom."

The somewhat episodic nature of the show so far completely fooled me, I thought Catra would maaaybe escape with the sword and leave Bow and Glimmer behind but nope, a literal cliffhanger ending, with Adora powerless, alone and crying.

Catra wasn't just talking when she said that the way to get to Adora, was to go for the heart. It's impressive how successful she was at doing _everything_ she planned to do. The one thing I could maybe fault her is that she attacked Frosta instead of just leaving, I'm not sure the distraction was _that_ needed, and it won her an enemy if Adora manages to convince Frosta next episode about how everything was the Horde's fault. It should be easier with all the exploding proof around.

I'm not the biggest fan of jealousy plots but this one was handled very well, it made me cringe only once and that's more than I can usually ask for. Glimmer being rescued by Adora and the other princesses next episode(?) is going to be so good for her. It'll show her that she's not alone and that a lot of people have her back now.

There was some interesting worldbuilding, with Scorpia being a princess, the mentions of Star Sisters, Sweet Bee and Peekablue, the existence of Rune Stones which I don't remember from before, etc.

I love how deceiving this show can be, in a good way. It _looks_ soft and cute, and it usually is but there's an undercurrent of complexity that shines. There are alliances, politics, neutral parties, everyone has their own motivations. Most characters _feel_ real, in a way that most cartoons don't.

Can't wait to find out what happens next episode, until next time!

#shera #shera liveblog #shera s01e08 #spop

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